


good karma

by blueparacosm



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst, Communication Failure, Drug Abuse, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Humor, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Canon Fix It, Toxic Relationship, a really headass scheme, for money, mac and dennis scam the karma system, mac and dennis try to be good people, repression!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 14:38:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17367743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueparacosm/pseuds/blueparacosm
Summary: It was different now that Mac might go off and find a man to love who wasn't Dennis. It was eminently, impossibly harder, now that Dennis could see two endings: one where Mac was gone, and one where Dennis had to learn to be good.





	good karma

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is not an accurate representation of how karma works. it is important to me that you understand this is not how karma works.
> 
> as always, any disrespectful comments or phrases do not reflect my personal views, and mac and dennis' relationship is not healthy even if it "works for them". if you find yourself in a similar situation, i strongly advise that u run
> 
> thank u for reading <3 pls enjoy!!

    They were beset first by a jar, half-full.

   The jar was made of glass, of course, and scotch-taped to its opaque face was a piece of paper that read "Donate to help our Stacey fight Cancer!"

   That jar on the counter at the Wawa always said something different, as there were many people in their city, many people with many troubling and colorful problems. The jar could have said anything, really. "Feed the hungry children" or "Save the rainforests" or "Bail for Greg, the guy who murdered lots of kittens and puppies" because nobody cared what happened to the coins in that jar, they just didn't feel like going through the trouble of tucking their change back into their wallets and decided to dump it there.

   Except for Mac, who kept an eye on every penny.

   "Your change is fifty-six cents," the cashier said as Dennis reached around Mac to grab the sweaty necks of a bottle of Mountain Dew and a can of Cerise Limón La Croix, as Mac fumbled with his old floppy wallet.

   "Just put it in the jar like everybody else, man," Dennis said, and Mac hiked up his shoulders, scraping the change off of the counter into a dark and barren fold in his wallet.

   "If I put it in the jar every time we'd eventually rack up a net loss of like, a thousand dollars."

   "You never put any of it in the jar," Dennis countered, thumbing two Power Shot Multiplier lotto tickets as the bell jingled overhead and Mac shouldered one of the heavy convenience store double doors open, held it with his heel and ankle for Dennis. "Maybe we'd have better karma if you'd start putting some of it in the jar, maybe finally win on one of these fucking tickets," he muttered, flapping the scratch-offs between his fingers.

   "Karma?!" Mac exclaimed. The sun was setting a million miles too close and casted an orange flush and a glittering of sweat over their faces in the heart of a Philadelphian summer, as they opened and shut their car doors and placed the two lotto tickets on the dogbox between them. "Call me when I convert to voodoo magicism, then maybe I'll start consulting everybody's tip jars and Go-Find-Me's."

   Dennis rolled his eyes, unfolding his sunglasses with a series of clicks. "Karma's in Christianity too, dipshit. I think you call it "What Would Jesus Do?"" Mac's face tightened momentarily, before he crossed his arms and plunged back into his seat, staring at the tip jar from behind a Range Rover windshield and a space in the store window between Camels for $5.89 posters.

   "Damn," he conceded. "Jesus would totally consult the cancer jar." He chewed his lip for a moment, and then flung the passenger side door open and speed-walked back into the Wawa.

   Dennis watched him dump the change from his wallet into the jar in one fell swoop, a sudden conviction about him that could only mean Dennis, in his play-pretend-judgement and his pestering, had once again made trouble. After all, a changed Mac always meant trouble.

   "Give me a penny so we can scratch these off," said Dennis once Mac and his big body had climbed back inside and finished rattling the Range Rover like a rainshaker. Mac gave him no such thing, cringing sheepishly as Dennis' eyes darted from him to the just-over-half-full cancer jar between the cigarette posters.

   "Goddamn it, Mac."

 

* * *

 

   They won one-hundred smackers on Mac's ticket.

   Mac, oblivious to Dee snatching her dime away and squawking about her owed percentage, had gripped Dennis by the shoulders and shaken him, eyes wide. "It's the good karma, Dennis!" he cried. "You were right!"

   "Oh," Dennis said, surprised but putting on an unaffected front. "Well, of course I was right."

   Mac had this great, ambitious face on, this expression that came only with the poor fellow's few and far between successes as he capered toward the old front door of the bar. Dennis stared after him with an unshakable grin, astonished by how easy it had been to make big bucks and cheer Mac up, and how all it had taken was one small good deed, a deed they could do plenty more of.

   "I'll go cash this in," said Mac, ticket in hand, backing out into the daylight and pointing a finger at Dennis. "You keep raking in good karma points."

   "Don't you need a ride?"

   "Nah, I think I'll walk," Mac said with a greedy little smile. "I have a feeling someone's dropped their wallet somewhere along the way."

   While Mac was gone, Dennis gave drinks on the house to all four of their regulars. The patrons drank up about sixteen beers and twelve assorted types of hard liquor, because they were in a dive bar at eleven in the morning and thus, alcoholics. That came down to twenty-eight good karma points; Mac was going to be thrilled when they tallied up later. Dennis felt he could hardly wait to flaunt his work.

   When Frank ripped him a new one for it, Dennis only promised him that he and Mac had a scheme going that'd win it all back, tenfold. "You damn well better have," said his little father. "You and your cuckoo boyfriend aren't sucking this shithole dry while my money's in it."

   Dennis, after Frank left, stared at an old lime on the bar that Charlie had squashed under his finger hours ago, thinking it was rather cocklike of Frank to call Mac his cuckoo boyfriend knowing that Mac was gay and Dennis was not, and that Mac hadn't tried to kiss him in months.

   "There's some suit-and-tie types headed our way," Dee called from the window, "I'll distract them while you and Charlie take care of that barf puddle?"

   "Hm?" Dennis said absently, tearing his gaze away from the sad lime. "Oh, yeah. Sure."

   Charlie mopped and Dennis stood there dutifully, hands in his pockets and a frown on his face.

   Mac hadn't tried to kiss him in months.

 

* * *

 

   Later that night, Mac spread out the five twenty-dollar bills on the coffee table and looked up at Dennis carefully. "I think we have to give it away."

   Dennis opened his mouth and stared, aghast. "Wh- no!"

  "Yeah, bro. Think about it," Mac started to explain, "karma gave us this much just for putting a couple of coins in that jar. Imagine if we put a whole Benjamin in there. We'll be loaded! This is an investment, dude, trust me."

   Dennis trusted Mac, he'd been right so far, and so they ordered a pizza to celebrate. Dennis even tipped the delivery man. "Good thinking," said Mac, and Dennis kept his grin to himself as he collected a couple of beers from the broken box in the bottom of the refrigerator. Mac was always saying things like that. He thought Dennis was so smart, thought Dennis was smarter than Mac himself, even, and Mac seemed to think his mind was a gift to the world. Mac had once insisted on being called "the brain" of the group for weeks, but it never caught on for some reason. Probably because Mac was an idiot and Dennis gave Charlie a bag of Cheetos if he promised to never call Mac "the brain".

   "I know it isn't Tuesday yet, but we should totally have a celebratory movie night," Mac suggested, and so they were beset secondly by a "Predator" DVD that Dennis had laid weary eyes on one too many times, and intended to say so.

   "This is way better than your girly shit! I _hate_ Brunch at Brittany's!" Mac shouted petulantly, guarding the DVD player with his body.

   "Forgive me if I don't wanna watch you drool over Dutch's sweaty jungle skin for an hour and forty-seven minutes again," Dennis said with a sneer, just moments before Mac's voice would start to raise a few squealing octaves.

   "No, no, no," Mac protested with a wag of his finger. "I like the action and the badassery and the thrill! Which is what "Predator"'s all about!"

   "Oh, sorry, I thought you were comfortable with your sexuality now," Dennis quipped, snide and keeping his eyes carefully on Mac's reddening face as he touched the lip of his beer bottle to his mouth. "Performed your whole gay rain dance for daddy dearest and still can't admit you only make us watch this movie because you wanna lick Schwarzenegger's arms."

   Dennis expected Mac to do all number of things: shout, whine, beg some more. He hadn't expected Mac to drop the movie case onto the coffee table with a startling clatter and begin to amble off to his bedroom. "Not funny," he said.

_"So_ sensitive," muttered Dennis at Mac's retreating figure, taking another sip of beer but watching the corner carefully to see if Mac would come back into the room. When he did, it was usually no good.

   "You know what?" Mac said, turning himself around accusatory-finger-first, looking hot behind the eyes, "All that stuff was really hard for me, and you don't get to joke about it! I don't make fun of you like that, man!"

   "Make fun of _me?"_ Dennis asked, sitting up from the couch defensively. "Even if I had something to make fun of, you're too obsessed with me to even say something about it!"

   "Ob-" Mac stuttered, " _obsessed_ with you?"

   Dennis put his beer down on the table and sauntered towards Mac, postured like a vulture swooping in to inspect a fresh carcass. Mac always smelled like blood to Dennis. Spent his life walking around like an open wound, waiting to be infected, peeled open further by anybody willing to pay enough attention to him.

   "Always keeping track of what I'm eating, how much I'm sleeping, following me around and staring at me, always talking my goddamn ear off, and putting your hand on my _fucking_ leg!"

   When Dennis' vision finally stopped swimming, Mac's expression looked like that of a man who'd been slapped right across the face. "That's just... friend shit, man. We're friends. I care about you."

   "You're a stalker, Mac. You exhaust me."

   "Okay," Mac nodded, staring at the carpet. "I'll back off. Sorry," he said, and retreated to his room as a troubling gust of finality swept over Dennis, a sense of having, at last, drained too much of the bottomless well of Mac.

    Dennis collapsed back onto the couch, accidentally banged his shin against the coffee table, and knocked his beer over onto the rug as he shouted out in pain. Normally Mac would come running to see if he was hurt, but Dennis found himself with wet socks, alone in the dark living room. So much for tipping the pizza guy.

 

* * *

 

   In the morning Mac was perfectly jubilant again, and climbed into the Range Rover with a crisp hundred dollars clutched in his hand for a shiny new Tuesday full of scamming the karma system.

   "You sure you want to give it up?"

   "Yeah, man," Mac answered, watching the apartment complex parking lot dissolve into a shadow behind them as Dennis pulled out onto the street. "It'll be worth it, you'll see."

   "I believe you," Dennis agreed, gripping the steering while tight as Mac killed the beginnings of a smile on his own lips and continued to stare out of the car window with a hardened face. A stranger's face.

   Dennis was always losing him, and one day Mac would slip through his fingers completely, but he didn't know how to stop it. So he did what he always did: hope Mac's well could be dug a little deeper.

   Mac banged on the window and yelled "Stop!" while Dennis was lost in his own thoughts, who slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a screeching halt. Out of the window sat a ragged-looking man on the curb, an empty coffee cup extended for change.

   "Bingo," said Dennis with a clap as Mac leapt out of the car, approached the man and extended their twenties to him. The man proceeded to take the money, snatch Mac's phone out of his hand, and run for his life.

   Dennis jumped in his seat, shouting "Hey!" to no avail. For all Mac's talk of action and badassery and being the Sheriff of Paddy's, he stood stunned and stupid on the curb for a few moments before returning to the car, slouching dejectedly and staring out of the windshield.

   "Should we, you know, pursue him?" Dennis asked, and Mac shrugged.

   "Bad karma to hunt down a hobo, probably."

   Dennis chewed his thumbnail for a moment, before a car behind him honked loudly and forced him to kick it back into gear. "Maybe this whole karma thing is bullshit, dude."

   Mac shook his head. "God is just testing us. You'll see."

   After a while of driving in silence, Dennis wondered how he might get some kind of positive reaction out of Mac that day, who was a good listener to a fault and would inevitably dance around Dennis for weeks now, while Mac wondered how he might distance himself just enough to pry some kind of kindness or apology out of his roommate while still managing to appear undisturbed by the events of last night.

   Mac wished Dennis would be nicer. Dennis wished Mac would stop smothering him. But they simply hadn't learned the right words from the English language to make that dream possible, and thus, this was the way they communicated. Fox and rabbit.

   (In the forest, there was a rabbit and a fox. The fox curled its tail around the rabbit to sleep, was kind to its rabbit while tearing the other rabbits to shreds. The rabbit loved the fox, was made to feel special by the fox what with the not being eaten, and became too comfortable with the fox. The rabbit followed the fox too loudly and ruined its hunting. The rabbit hopped on the fox while it was sleeping. The rabbit pulled the fox's tail. The fox snarled at the rabbit. The rabbit ran away, slowly enough that the fox could catch up if it wanted to, seeing as the rabbit was a class traitor of sorts and had no other friends. The fox always caught up, and they bounded around the forest together until the rabbit became trouble for the fox again.)

   Once they parked the car outside of Paddy's, Mac walked into the bar without telling Dennis thank you for the ride, but stopped to charade tying his double-knotted shoelaces in front of the door so that Dennis would bump into him when he entered. Dennis was pleased to place an unneeded hand on Mac's hip and steady them, and Mac was happy to touch Dennis' chest in apology, checking over his shoulder to make sure Dennis was still watching him as he made his way over to the bar.

   The fox knew it would one day lose track of the rabbit, and the rabbit knew the fox would one day become hungry. Until then, the fox and the rabbit chased each other in circles.

 

* * *

 

   They were beset thirdly by a meth rock.

   It was about three P.M. when Rickety Cricket gingerly opened the bar door and peered around, garnering the unwarranted angry attention of every shareholder.

   "What do you want, Cricket? You're stinking up the place!" Dee shouted, ferociously wiping down a table. Something was bothering her that day and she was obviously dying for someone to ask, but Mac and Dennis had their own problems to worry about, and definitely didn't want to hear her voice for any prolonged periods of time.

   "I left something in the little boy's room," said Rickety Cricket, and hurried to the restroom with his back to the wall. Dennis sort of felt bad about how ugly Cricket was, and sometimes felt guilty for manhunting him even if it had made his nips super hard.

   "Well hurry up and find it," grumbled Dee. "Every minute you're in here our health rating goes down another letter."

   Charlie, previously hunched over a colorful piece of paper on the bar, put down one of his new glitter ink pens with a clack and sat up straight, glowering at the closing bathroom door. That undeserved health inspection rating was wholly representative of Charlie's self-worth, and nobody fucked with his A-.

   "Found it!" Rickety Cricket cheered as he came out and brought a long whiff of the men's restroom with him, and began scurrying back to the door with a closed fist.

   "Found what?" Dennis asked.

   "My meth!" Cricket answered merrily, before his expression fell. "Shit, I mean- my- Seth, my bug, Seth, see, he's-" he opened his hand to quickly flash the contents of his palm, when a small white rock fell from it and busted into four smaller rocks on the hardwood. "Ah, shit!" Rickety Cricket shrieked, and frantically collected the pieces.

   "Oh, for fuck's sake, Cricket!" Mac shouted.

   "He's flinging crank around in our bah', somebody's gonna call the feds on us!" yelled Frank from the office doorway, moving to yank the pistol out of his waistband.

   "Murder's not better! Murder's not better!" Mac shrieked, turning from Rickety Cricket's disaster to Frank's impending one.

   Dennis, then, really noticed how pathetic Rickety Cricket was for the first time, as he fumbled with his bathroom meth on a dive bar floor, and recalled that many of the scars, infections, and addictions that ailed him had been signed off on and delivered by the gang themselves. Cricket looked sweaty and shaky, and a bit wary of his own glass, as if it were the resort after the last resort. Dennis was well-acquainted with the earth-shattering pain and misery of withdrawal.

   "Cricks," Dennis called. "Before you go." He held up a handful of cash from the register, and the rest of the group erupted into screams and protests.

_"What are you doing?!"_

_"Dennis!"_

_"Have you lost your goddamned mind?!"_

   He chanced a glance at Mac, though, who only had his face screwed up in deep thought, silently conflicted.

   "What's the catch?" Cricket asked, apprehensive, and for good reason. "'Cause I've pretty much hit my limit on dick stuff for today."

   "Jesus, Cricket," Dennis swore, grimacing and shoving the money into the other man's chest. "Just get out of here, that's the catch."

   Once Rickety Cricket had left, Dennis tried to look natural and move with the flow of the bar until he was sidled up to Mac. "How's that for good karma?" he bragged, to which Mac, to Dennis' great disappointment, only shook his head.

   "I've been thinking..." he said, "and I don't know that enabling someone's crystal meth addiction is a good deed, bro."

   "But I gave him money," Dennis argued, frowning deeply. "He was in pain, and now he can buy all the crystal meth his little heart desires, and he won't be in pain anymore."

   "Yeah, he'll just be a meth addict until he runs out of cash and the sweats start up again, or he, you know-" Mac dropped his head to his shoulder and lolled his tongue out of his mouth, miming a cartoonish death.

   "So I was supposed to just let him suffer?!" Dennis shrieked. "You don't know what it's like!"

   "Woah," Charlie interjected. "What's going on?"

   Mac and Dennis turned to Charlie with curtains of anger rolling over their faces, and thus, an evening was spent making convincing but swear-laden posters, banging gavels, and deciding whether or not to get Mac hooked on heroine for the purpose of first-hand experience.

   "You're only prolonging his suffering!" Mac screamed as he began to lose the trial. "You think you're helping him, but it's only going to be harder for him to get away from it next time, when it's worse! You're _killing_ him!"

   No one had expected Mac to be this passionate about Rickety Cricket's addiction. Mac was always passionate; his ferocious, often baseless passion was his calling card. Mac was baselessly passionate enough about this, apparently, to punch Dennis square in the face.

   "Shit!" Frank cursed, tugging Mac away fiercely. Mac, who was so much bigger and stronger now. Big and strong enough to turn stupid arguments and wrestling matches into hospital trips and frayed relationships.

   Mac watched with blurry eyes as Dee and Charlie stuffed tissues up Dennis' red-weeping nose, as Dennis only stared at Mac with an almost unreadable expression, an expression that spoke of knowing a story whose ending was deeply, profoundly sad.

   Because Mac's tears and Dennis' bloody nose had nothing to do with Matthew Mara or meth rocks, and they both knew it.

 

* * *

 

   The boys weren't experiencing a lot of luck with the whole karma thing, so that night they packed up all their clothes and left them on the stoop of the homeless shelter that Mac had planned to run to if his mother ever found the magazine full of abs and dicks in the toilet tank.

   Dennis, between pulsations of his blood-speckled nose, reasoned with himself that he'd buy silk pajamas and a tailored suit that tapered his legs once they won the Powerball jackpot for this one, and all of Mac's clothes were Dennis' anyway.

   They bought two Royal Riches scratch-offs from the Wawa on the way home. They were both a bust.

   Mac promised harder, more fiercely, that this was a test of their faith, and that they just needed to do a little bit more to prove it. Then again, all of Mac's failures were tests of faith.

 

* * *

 

   In the morning, Dennis reached for a hanger to get dressed for work. The hanger was unusually light and ultimately came out of the closet empty, and Dennis screamed into his fist as he was sorely reminded of their new situation. Then he put on the clothes he'd left crumpled on the bedroom floor last night, sprayed himself generously in Jasmin Noir, and waited for Mac in the car.

   Mac usually brought Dennis a banana or a granola bar which Dennis would leave in the cupholder but appreciate the gesture of when he was in the right mood. That day Mac forgot, or neglected to do so at all, and Dennis saw how fast it was all falling apart as Mac sat in his crumpled clothes from the day before and stared out upon the road without saying a word.

   Dennis rolled down the passenger side window. "You smell like shit."

   "So do you."

   "I smell like Jasmin Noir."

   "I know," Mac said. "I hate it. You're burning my nose up."

   Dennis had always thought Mac liked his perfume. Well, that was fine. He hated Mac's colognes, especially when he wore them both at once because he thought Dennis would find it sexy, because he was crazy about Dennis, loved him, was obsessed with him and everything he did. Because Mac was annoying and stupid and pathetic, and smelled like shit.

   At the Wawa, Mac bought a blue Gatorade and Dennis bought a caramel macchiato in a can, and they asked the clerk to tear off two Love to Win tickets.

   "That'll be $7," said the clerk to Mac, and Mac and Dennis had gotten in line like strangers and planned to pay for their items separately, so sorting their coins together because Mac only had $5 made it all a bit awkward. In the end, they only had enough put together to afford the scratch-offs, so Mac put their drinks back with a long-suffering sigh, and they compiled what little change they were given to be put in the cancer jar.

   In the car, Dennis couldn't wait until they got back to the bar to borrow a dime from Dee, so he scratched the tickets off himself and endured the black residue that collected under his carefully-manicured fingernail, only to have zero dollars to their names.

   "That's it," Dennis snapped, chucking the tickets out of the window and turning a cheek as they tumbled along the breeze and slid past gas pumps.

   Mac was almost hit by a car while chasing down the litter, running with a long stride and elbows pointing out to make himself look bigger on the off-chance that karma might be better able to see him being a green and clean citizen.

   Dennis was beginning to see how Mac could convert wholeheartedly to any religion, any cult, from Catholicism to Gay Atheism, from Ass Kickers United to Buddhism, if only he was rewarded once. He'd always been Dennis' most dedicated, and only, follower. All it took was some deed, some sign so insignificant that Dennis couldn't have named it, but Mac had clearly remembered it down to the phase of the moon the day it happened or else he wouldn't still be here, putting up with Dennis' godlike cruelty.

   Mac climbed into the car and began to scold Dennis, but the sounds and their contents went right over Dennis' head. Mac's soft brown hair was windblown, his lips pale from morning, eyes big and bold as ever, and his once-babyish face chiseled and angular in a way that looked far healthier than Dennis' sick gauntness. Beautiful. It hit Dennis all at once sometimes, fast and hard out of nowhere, inconvenient and frustrating. Like a rock through a windshield. Beautiful, loyal Mac. Always, always, always like a rock coming through Dennis' windshield.

   "You'll see," Mac said as Dennis shook himself out of his trance. "God is teaching us something, bro. Patience, I'm sure. It's taking extra long because you're a huge sinner so this is like, kind of a project for Him, but soon it'll all be worth it."

   Dennis glanced wearily at the Range Rover's speedometer. "I hope he finishes up with the bells and whistles by this afternoon, 'cause I'm running out of gas."

 

* * *

 

   Mac had always wanted a person who would stick by his side for all of time. Charlie was kind of like that, but he didn't like it when Mac was around all the time, because Charlie needed tons of space, more than Dennis even, and plenty of peace and quiet for all his art projects and sewer adventures. Plus nowadays he seemed to like Frank better anyway.

   Dennis used to like being that person. Dennis used to like being Mac's friend. It was Dennis' idea to live together and Dennis' idea to buy a bar and Dennis' idea to have movie nights and monthly dinners. It was Dennis who touched Mac's neck, his arms, his thighs. Dennis used to never go more than half an hour out of the apartment without sending Mac a text to check in, and now Mac's having trouble even keeping him in the state.

   He was losing his person, and sometimes it seemed like there was nothing he could do to stop it save for hoping Dennis would get lonely without him. But if Mac really thought about it, he'd probably like being alone. Sure seemed like that's all Dennis ever wanted these days: to be left alone.

   He was trying, but Mac couldn't think of anywhere else to go.

   Dennis had been looking shifty behind the bar for about five minutes now. Mac hadn't meant to stare, honest, but Dennis looked cute today with his shirt on backwards and his hair all curly, and he kept touching his nose which made Mac feel really bad, so he just couldn't help but stare.

   Mac wished he hadn't been staring, as the money missing from the register was the fourth thing that had beset them during their rapidly increasing trials and tribulations.

   "Are you stealing?" Mac hissed, after hurrying up to the bar and planting his hands down on its sticky surface with a BANG!

   "We need gas to get home, dude! I'm just borrowing," Dennis placated as he folded up bills and tucked them into his wallet. "I'll pay everybody back, you know I'm good for it."

   "You aren't! You aren't good for it! Stealing straight up money is terrible karma! You're holding probably a thousand bad karma points in your hands as we speak!" Mac whisper-shouted, looking over his shoulder in a panic for the attentive hovering entity of karma. "Put it back, Dennis!"

   Dennis only stared him down, firm in his decision to steal straight from the pockets of their friends.

   "You're sabotaging the mission!" Mac shrieked, having lost grips on his previously carefully-tuned volume. "You hate it when good things happen, don't you?! You hate good things!"

   "No," Dennis snapped, "I hate your crazy bullshit! There's no such thing as good karma!"

   "You said so!" Mac cried, pointing right between Dennis' eyes. "You told me it was the same as W.W.J.D.!"

   "I lied, you delusional son of a bitch! I was messing with you! There's no such thing as karma, you just have a gambling addiction and a messiah complex! You're not Jesus, you're nothing like Jesus! You're a gay white asshole from Philly, Mac! Get over yourself!"

   "I never said I was Jesus! Nobody can ever be Jesus!" Mac screamed, bursting at the seams like an overripe tomato. "I don't think you're even talking about me, since all you ever think about is yourself! Maybe _you're_ a gay white asshole from Philly! Maybe _you_ should get over yourself!"

   At that moment, a thread, somewhere deep inside Dennis, carefully stretched between one side of him to the other and protected with his life, was snipped by Mac's hand, holding the same pair of scissors that had threatened Dennis since the day Ryan Keagler kissed him in the ninth grade.

   He grabbed Mac by the collar and yanked his arm down hard, slamming Mac's face against the bar. Mac came up dizzy, wobbled for a moment, and then leapt across the bar and tackled Dennis to the floor.

   "Get off of me," Dennis gasped as they grappled purposelessly. "Get off you fat fuckin' oaf."

   "What happened to you?!" Mac spat, struggling against Dennis' unabated wriggling, who was surprisingly limber and obnoxiously spry. "Who made you so fucking mean and sad?!"

   "You!" Dennis screamed, and then glared up at the ceiling regretfully as Mac stilled on top of him and crawled off of Dennis with a terrible sadness about him. He leaned his head against the bar cabinets, staring at the colorful shelves of wine hovering precariously above them on the adjacent wall. "I don't understand, Dennis," he said. "I don't understand what I keep doing that's so wrong."

   "You won't leave," Dennis answered, lolling his head toward Mac. "Most people, when you criticize them and shout at them and scratch them, they leave! You never go anywhere, and you gotta get away from me, Mac."

   "Why do you hate me so much?" Mac asked quietly, and Dennis dragged himself into a sitting position.

   "I don't hate you," he promised, and swore under his breath when Mac's eyes began to water, as if he didn't believe him for even a second. "I don't hate you. I just... you could have more, Mac. You're wasting your life on me."

   "I love you," Mac argued. "You're my best friend."

   "You don't want to be friends," Dennis said, shaking his head and taking Mac's hand in his, weaving his fingers between the other man's. Mac swallowed, staring down at their  hands, intertwined, and then slowly, painstakingly pulled his away.

   "It doesn't matter what I want," Mac muttered. "We've been blood brothers for, like, a thousand years. Just because I'm out now doesn't mean that anything's changed."

   _"Everything's_ changed!" Dennis blurted out, and then began to talk so quickly that Mac could hardly understand, reaching out in alarm as Dennis' eyes became shiny with a film of tears.

   "Woah, woah, woah," Mac placated, "Den, hey!"

   "Whatever!" Dennis blubbered, shoving Mac away and pulling himself up alongside the bar. "Just, forget it. I'm- I gotta go." Dennis wiped his nose and shoved the bar door open and vanished in a bright burst of daylight, and Mac feared his best friend would be on a flight to Washington or Nebraska or Florida within the hour.

   "Drama," Dee quipped unhelpfully as Mac barreled out of the bar after Dennis, and Mac made a mental note to get the joke stool out of the basement tomorrow.

   As he trekked home on foot, Mac nudged tired worms back into the grass, knocked on a door to let a cold dog in, and threw somebody's tumbling Honeybun wrapper into a trashcan, never once thinking of karma. All he could think about was Dennis, and how everything had changed.

 

* * *

 

   It was easier to deal with when they were both calling themselves straight.

   The jealousy Dennis felt stirring in his gut when Mac was watching Dennis try out his new glittery highlighter in the bathroom mirror and talking ceaselessly about how much he missed Carmen, because Dennis' makeup reminded him of women, and it was only women that Mac would ever entertain.

   The attraction haunting Dennis when Mac was caught lounging around the apartment in nothing but the leather duster and his briefs, because Mac would never admit that he was attracted to Dennis, so Dennis didn't have to admit it either.

   The love that settled old and warm in Dennis' chest when Mac did those things that Mac does, like buy Dennis' favorite lime sherbet on his way home from the gym and organize all of Dennis' shampoos by fullness to emptiness on the edge of the bathtub, because they were just friends and blood brothers and roommates and there was never a future for Dennis to worry about.

   It was different now that Mac might go off and find a man to love who wasn't Dennis. It was eminently, impossibly harder, now that Dennis could see two endings: one where Mac was gone, and one where Dennis had to learn to be good.

   The apartment was empty when Dennis got home, as if no one had ever lived there at all, which he thought was rather fitting for the more likely story of the two.

 

* * *

 

   "I, uh, might have sold all the furniture," Mac said, once he got home and found Dennis sat on the floor, peeling an orange and staring at the place where the television used to be. "I had the buyers pick it up themselves while we were at work... they definitely took more than I sold," he murmured, looking around at the barren apartment. "The money went to a gorilla sanctuary in Texas."

   "Great," said Dennis, avoiding Mac's worried gaze. "I'm going to bed."

   He brushed his teeth hard enough to make his toothbrush look like a surfboard, took his meds, stripped off his dirty clothes, and made to fall asleep while the sun was still coming in through the window. The second he began to drift into unconsciousness, he made a vague note of the fact that his room had been left untouched by Mac's crazy bullshit, and wondered if it was a gesture of respect, or Mac throwing Dennis out to the bad karma wolves.

 

* * *

 

   Mac tapped Dennis awake a few hours after he'd gone to bed, shyly scuffing his socked feet against the rug.

   "Can I sleep with you?" he asked, expecting to be rejected. "I sold my bed."

   Dennis stared at him blearily for a moment, and then scooted to the edge of his mattress and gave a miniscule nod, a barely-there movement that only Mac would've caught.

   Mac started to peel off his clothes, but thought better of it and climbed into Dennis' bed fully-dressed.

   "Jesus," Dennis griped. "Take your clothes off, you reek."

   "Are you sure?"

   "Yes, Mac," Dennis sighed. "I'm not scared of your abs."

   Mac quietly began to strip himself of his clothes on the edge of the bed and grumbled, "Thought I was fat."

   "I'm sorry," Dennis apologized, perhaps for the first time in his life, and then dropped his head to the pillow. "I'm a dick."

   "Yeah," agreed Mac, all the while staring at the floor in bewilderment. "You are." He crawled under the covers and handed Dennis a Cupid's Cash lottery ticket and a nickel. Dennis scratched off his squares quietly, offered Mac the failed ticket, and turned over onto his side to go back to sleep. Mac's was a bust too, and he slid them onto Dennis' bedside table and then sunk back under the covers without a peep.

   Charlie used to tell Mac all the time that he should just forget Dennis. That Dennis was a bastard man and Mac would regret moving in with him, sharing a bar with him, being friends with him.

   Sometimes Mac did regret it.

  And sometimes Dennis stopped to draw super badass eyeliner on Mac while he was doing his own makeup, or picked him up something good from the hamburger store, or drove Mac to The Rainbow even though he didn't want to come inside. Sometimes Dennis made Mac's protein shake for him when he was running late in the morning, or bought him a dog even though he hates dogs, or sang him a song in front of everybody at Guigino's.

   Sometimes Dennis pulled the duvet up to Mac's shoulders when he was cold but trying not to move too much, and held Mac's hand under the covers.

   "Den?" Mac whispered as Dennis smoothed his thumb over the back of Mac's hand.

   "Hm?"

   "I'm sorry I punched you in the face and called you a dick."

   "I'm sorry I slammed your head on the bar and said you smelled like shit, even though you do."

   Mac turned his face to look at Dennis, who laid still, eyes closed. "Are you sorry you went to North Dakota?"

   Dennis appeared to think carefully about it for a moment, and then turned to face Mac. "I'm in love with you, Mac," he said, which is not at all what Mac thought he would say.

   Mac had dreamt of this moment since he was in high school, and fantasized about sweeping Dennis off of his feet, or of grabbing his hands and spinning in a circle like they do in the movies, or of pulling him close and kissing him in the pouring rain.

   Instead, he was struggling to keep Dennis from wriggling off of the bed and making a break for it.

   "No!" Mac shouted, tugging on Dennis' arm. "Stop running away from me, dude! You're always running away from me!"

   "I'm off my meds!" Dennis yelled, jerking his limbs away from Mac, which was a lie, because Dennis would never admit to being off his meds, and Mac always counted his pills and listened for how many times Dennis flushed the toilet anyway. "I can't be held accountable! I lied! I'm off my meds!"

   _"Dennis-!"_   Mac yanked Dennis back into bed and held tight to his arm as Dennis lied flat on his back and breathed heavily, like an animal that had gotten itself stuck in a trap. "Say you meant it."

   "I can't," he whispered. "We aren't good. I'm not good. 'Cause if you leave when we're just friends, it'll be better. It'll be easier."

   "I won't. I'll never leave."

   "You're crazy, Mac," Dennis swore. "You'd be crazy not to."

   "Then I guess I'm crazy," Mac shrugged, reaching out to run his fingers across Dennis' scalp, through all the little curls there that he loved so much. A white hair glinted in the timid moonlight from the window, and Mac plucked it quickly. Dennis hated finding those. "We can be crazy together, man. Maybe that's good in itself, you know? We... we work together." Mac fitted his own fingers together like a dovetail hinge in front of Dennis' face. "We mesh."

   The other man had deflated a bit at Mac's sweet promises and soothing touch, his sudden logical clarity despite pleading insanity in the court of Dennis' absurdity. Mac always did win every case, in the end. "Okay," Dennis conceded, after twenty-something long years. "We- yeah. Crazy. We can do that."

   Mac smiled softly, mostly to himself as he admired their reflection in the mirror over Dennis' dresser: the two of them in bed together, bathed in the blue of a waning moon. He had only ever pictured one future for himself, and he was looking at it.

   "How long have you known you were gay?" Mac blurted.

   Dennis cringed, throwing an arm over his eyes. "Bro."

   "Sorry," Mac said, keeping his hands to himself and shrinking back down under the duvet. "Baby steps."

 

* * *

 

   Mac was always getting caught up in the heat and the speed of things, forgetting important details and failing to find the words he wanted to use, especially when his head was spinning with anger or his heart was jumping for joy.

   "I forgot to tell you, bro," Mac said, shaking Dennis awake again when the red dashes on the alarm clock read 4 A.M. "I'm in love with you too."

   Mac expected him to say something cocky, like "No shit, Mac," or "Who isn't?".

   "Well," Dennis croaked instead, lying with his back to Mac which sunk in with a heavy breath, as if something very big and very old had finally left his body. "I suppose that's good."

 

* * *

 

   A distant honk sounded and jerked Mac awake. Drool clung from a wet spot on the pillow to the corner of his lips and Mac swatted it away as he dragged himself out of bed, though he could've sworn he'd sold his bed to gorillas.

   He trudged into the kitchen that was much farther from his room than he recalled, and found himself staring bleary-eyed at a yellow post-it note on the countertop with a heart drawn on it, and his protein shake made next to it.

   He showered quickly, brushed his teeth, combed his hair and tugged on his twice-worn Boy's Club shirt and jeans, slipped into his boots, and climbed into the Range Rover that was running in the parking lot. He plunked a granola bar into the cupholder and Dennis smiled down at it.

   Mac scolded Dennis for letting him sleep in so late as Dennis turned up the music a little louder and rolled down the windows, which left a wonderful breeze blowing on Mac's face once they hit the road. Dennis tentatively rested his hand on Mac's thigh after a few blocks, and Mac leaned against the window to hide his grin in the crook of his elbow. Never in his wildest fucking dreams, and yet, in every single one of them.

   The bell jingled ever-gleefully overhead at the Wawa as Mac went inside to get their drinks while Dennis pumped gas. It felt like another Mountain Dew and Cerise Limón La Croix kind of day, and at the counter Mac noticed that Icy Hot 7's lotto tickets were only a dollar each. He topped off the cancer jar instead, and the clerk touched his hand as he was pulling away.

   "Stacey's my girlfriend," she said. "I've seen you and that other guy putting cash in her jar all week. Let me pay for your drinks."

   "Oh," Mac said, as the pink-haired clerk with all the piercings dug a few dollars out of her pocket and placed them in the register. "Thanks."

   "Thank you," the clerk said gently, and the looked between the cigarette posters at Dennis, who had his arms crossed and was leaning against the gas pump. "Tell your friend I said thanks, too."

   "That's my boyfriend," Mac said uselessly, face splitting into a grin. The clerk laughed like she knew exactly how he felt, and it was a sweet sound that made Mac's heart sing, because he was just in one of those moods today. "I'll tell him."

   Mac gave a small wave to the clerk as he shouldered the door open, and cracked open Dennis' La Croix as he approached. Dennis made grabby hands as Mac leaned away from him and took a defiant sip, sticking his tongue out in disgust. "Gross. You really like this shit?"

   "Don't drink that, I paid for it," Dennis whined, snatching it away.

   "Actually," Mac countered, unscrewing his soda, "The clerk did. She's Stacey's girlfriend and wanted to thank us for all the money we put in the cancer jar."

   "Oh," Dennis said as he tossed an arm around Mac, raising his brows. "Well, I'd say free drinks is a sign of pretty good karma."

   "Yeah," Mac agreed, leaning his head on Dennis' shoulder and watching the morning sun smooth buttery rays over the earth from behind the Wawa gas pump. Dennis wasn't really a believer, but as he kissed Mac on the temple and climbed into the car, Mac realized exactly what karma had planned for them all along. "Really, really good."

 

**Author's Note:**

> AHH thank u so much for reading!!!! i hope u liked it!!! please let me know if you did! i will respond AT LENGTH to any comments, compliments, and theories!!!
> 
> my twitter is @slugcities if u wanna chat or MOOT UP! (thank u all so much for all the sweet curiouscat messages about my last fic, u are all wonderful people and had me crying straight up!)
> 
> food for thought: who was the fox and who was the rabbit?!!?!? haha gotcha babey!!!!!


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